Every three years, Tate Britain holds a Triennial exhibition celebrating current trends in British art. The latest opened on Tuesday and presents new or recent works by 28 British and international artists. It is curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, Gulbenkian Curator of Contemporary Art and the founding director of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. See previous post for a video of Bourriaud explaining the exhibition’s title, “Altermodern“.

Four hours ago I walked, hood up against the freezing sleet, to Tate Britain to see if it would help me understand the concept of altermodernism. I spent two hours there. I am none the wiser.

Here are some photographs from the exhibition (taken covertly, whenever the gallery stewards looked the other way):

The best bits of the exhibition are:

Ruth Ewan’s ‘Squeezebox Jukebox’ (2009), a massive accordion. I got to Tate Britain just as two volunteers began their daily task of playing songs on it (2pm).

Nathaniel Mellor’s ‘Giantbum’ (2009), a video installation in which a group of actors play explorers, lost inside a giant’s bowels and forced to eat excrement. Round the corner, three talking animatronic heads greet you with crazy eyes (see slideshow above).

A communal beanbag in the first gallery, big enough for a dozen people to slouch on.

When John William Waterhouse’s 1896 painting was taken off the walls of Manchester Art Gallery, furious critics described it as censorship or a publicity stunt. That couldn’t be further from the truth, says the artist at the centre of the stormWhen John William Waterhouse’s painting Hylas and the Nymphs was removed from the walls of the Manchester Art Galler […]